


thrice defied

by gryffsirius



Series: thrice defied verse [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M, Marauders era, Slight Canon Divergence, aren't tagged bc their roles werent big enough, but a lot of characters who have like one scene, i put voldy in as a Real Character because he plays a pretty big role, it's major character death because you know they die at the end, jily, or who are only mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-26 21:06:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13866009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryffsirius/pseuds/gryffsirius
Summary: "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…"James and Lily survived Voldemort three times. This is a story about those times, and the one time that they didn’t.





	1. once.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you in advance for reading! Please, if you like this even a little, a kudos or a comment does a lot for my ego and encourages me to keep going. I am on twitter (gryffsirius), instagram (emmakmarie) and tumblr (siriusorioff) if you're interested in saying hi!
> 
> Slight canon divergence in the James and Lily storyline because I only read some details about the timeline after I started writing, and I just let it develop naturally. It’s mostly all included, just a little shifted. And let’s be real, this would be canon divergence as well for Remus/Sirius alone. Teen+ rating is because of language and mentions of sex and violence, but there's nothing explicit aside from the massive amounts of cursing.

The first time is the summer of 1978, a few months after they get out of school.

It was James' idea for them to all join up with the Order immediately -  _Dumbledore needs talent,_ he said,  _and we're some of the smartest motherfuckers I know._

The Marauders and Lily, who'd become an honorary member by now, raised their glasses to that, toasting sloppily. It was three in the morning, mere hours before their graduation, and Sirius had brought a massive bottle of firewhiskey back to the dorm.

They all regretted drinking that much later that day (except perhaps Remus, who never seemed to experience hangovers) when they were sitting listening to speeches being made at their commencement ceremony, but Lily's head had fallen onto James' shoulder while she slept in their seats specially designated for Head Boy and Girl, so he'd considered it a win.

None of them expected to see any action immediately. They were thought of as  _too young, too new, too green_ by the majority of the Order. Sirius is always ready contest that statement, exclaiming hotly that  _we're of age, we're just as educated as any of you_ , Remus eventually pulling a little at his sleeve to get him to sit back down. Nonetheless, they're often relegated to smaller, less dangerous missions.

People are going missing, sometimes turning up in unexpected locations. James and Remus go on a reconnaissance mission into the depths of the Ministry, James walking around and talking loudly about philanthropy as though to cover their tracks, to see if it had been infiltrated. Like all the other assignments that they'd been on, it's nothing much.

Things start to get more dangerous over the course of the summer. Dumbledore sends Remus undercover to try and get some intel from the werewolves. James notices Peter's anxiety acting up more and more frequently, and tries to convince him to take more of a backseat, but Peter is and always has been a stubborn fucker - completely and totally unwilling to give up.

One night, they're told that they're supposed to sneak their way into a gala being hosted at Malfoy Manor in the upcoming weeks. Dumbledore, whose vague, undetermined sources had informed him of this, was sure that there would be activity relating to Voldemort's plans there, seeing as this event was intended solely for the families of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Sirius could get in, easily, as long as he claimed to see the error of his ways, and it was for that reason that he was supposed to be the primary of this investigation.

"There's no  _fucking_ way I'm letting you go alone, Pads," James argues at the kitchen table of their flat the night that Sirius comes home with that announcement. Lily's sitting on the kitchen counter, stirring a cup of tea. Peter's seated at the other end of the table, bouncing his leg nervously. Remus is undercover on assignment; they haven't seen him in two weeks, which is especially noticeable in how Sirius is acting and reacting to potentially incendiary situations.

"I wasn't going to ask you to," Sirius replies, and Peter looks up in alarm.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" he asks, and both James and Sirius turn to him. "Prongs, are you kidding? You want to go too?"

James crosses his arms, his jaw set. "I can't let him go by himself, it's not safe."

"You two are gonna get yourselves killed if you go together, just the two of you," Lily says, then pauses to take a sip of her tea. "So if James is going, I'm going."

"You're all fucking mental," Peter mutters, leaning back in his seat. "When you get killed, don't say I didn't warn you."

After managing to convince Dumbledore that they all need to be there, the three of them wrangle their way into the gala, getting into their dress robes and triple-checking that all of them know what the plan is supposed to be, with James making a fool of himself for only two full minutes when he sees Lily looking particularly elegant in her dress.

"Get it together, Prongs," Sirius had said, nudging him and laughing.

"Right," James had replied, trying to focus.

They make their way to the manor, Apparating onto the grounds and showing their hastily forged invitations at the door. It's a classy affair, and James has to say that he thinks it's a quite enjoyable, if a bit too upper crust, evening. There's some hiding from Sirius' parents and trying to avoid anyone who particularly hates them, but all in all, they spend the evening in relative anonymity, lingering by the snack table and making small talk with the less awful of the crowd. That is, until the guests start to trickle out, leaving what they were sure was the knot of Voldemort's core supporters lingering in the center of the main room.

"I didn't think you were interested in joining us, cousin," Bellatrix says after a while, after the three of them are the only ones left from the guests that clearly aren't invited to the after party. "You've made that clear enough on multiple occasions."

"Perhaps I've had a change of heart," Sirius replies, sitting down on a couch opposite her. He gestures to his best friend. "You know James Potter."

Bellatrix inclines her chin slightly, as though in acknowledgment. It takes a moment before she spots Lily.

"Well, Sirius, if your intent is to make a good impression on the Dark Lord, I would refrain from bringing around such riff-raff." Bellatrix has clearly dispensed with the pretense that the remaining party guests aren't Death Eaters. "The Dark Lord doesn't take kindly to Mudbloods, no matter how nicely they attempt to dress."

James is sure that he noticeably tensed at that, judging from how Sirius shoots him a warning look. "Come on, Bella, they're not that bad. Even you have to admit, at least, that their mediocre skills with magic provide  _some_ entertainment."

Bellatrix pauses. "I suppose I can give you that. This one's at least pretty, in any case."

James hates this. He hates being in this house, he hates feeling like he can't do anything, he hates being surrounded by people who would kill Lily in an instant if they paid attention to the conversation that Sirius is having with Bellatrix. It takes all his willpower to keep his hand from straying to the wand in his pocket.

Lily notices, and touches his elbow lightly, as though to soothe him in the most minimal way possible.

Sirius laughs, one that James can immediately tell is fake, because he's heard it many times before in Sirius' impersonation of his family. It's what they call his  _rich person laugh_. "Oh, Bella, and here I thought  _I_ was the gay cousin."

The evening continues in much of the same manner, until the numbers of the remaining guests have dwindled even further. James takes note of the way that Sirius' eyes keep darting around the room as though he's looking for someone specific, continuing to search even though it's fairly obvious that no one else is going to be arriving that night.

"You okay, mate?" James asks after the fifth time he notices Sirius scanning the room.

"Yeah, I just," Sirius begins, then stops and shakes his head. "Nothing. I'm - I'm just glad Regulus isn't here, that's all."

"Pads, he's only fifteen, it's not like he's gonna be allowed to join the Death Eaters."

"You're right, I guess," Sirius says, with a soft exhale that James thinks is meant to be a suppressed sigh. At that moment, their host, the wealthy and stuffy-looking Abraxas Malfoy taps on his flute of champagne with a knife, and as though everyone automatically knows the signal, the remaining twenty or so guests begin to take their seats around the massive dining table in the center of the great room. James takes note of faces, connecting them to names in his head, and judging from Sirius and Lily's expressions, he knows that they're doing the same.

The table is remarkably silent, before the doors open at the other end of the room, and James swears the temperature actually drops. On his left, Sirius tenses, and on his right, Lily's only movement is to reach out and put her hand on his leg for a moment. She squeezes his thigh for two beats,  _one, two_ , as though looking for a hint of security in the fact that they were together in this.

There's a general inclination of heads, murmured  _my Lord_ 's, and Voldemort takes a seat at the head of the table, almost as far away from the three of them as is physically possible. He's silent for a moment. James doesn't think he's heard Sirius take a breath in the entire time that Voldemort has been in the room.

"Abraxas," Voldemort says suddenly, turning to the Malfoy patriarch, who has taken a seat to his right, with his son Lucius next to him. He speaks softly, but with the kind of influence in his voice that James knows is indicative of how little effort he has to extend to get people to listen to him. "I see we have some new faces at the table tonight."

"We - we do, my Lord," Malfoy says, turning to look at the three of them. Earlier in the evening, Bellatrix had told their host about their intentions, and had secured them a place at the table, but James knows that it is not enough to keep them there for the rest of the night. He knows, he  _knows_ that any moment now, their carefully constructed peace with the people in this house is going to shatter. "This is -"

"You do not have to tell me who they are, Abraxas, I am quite aware," Voldemort replies, and there's a bite to his voice now. "Sirius Black. I see you've come to your senses."

"What can I say, it just took a long time," Sirius replies, leaning forward, trying to sound glib about the whole thing, but James can see that his hand is shaking a little as he reaches up and runs it through his hair. Voldemort says nothing, and his focus shifts to James.

"And James Potter. Now, this is a bit of a surprise. But if your intentions are as pure as your blood, you are welcome here." James nods, unsure of what to say, not quite trusting his voice. "Now, of course," Voldemort continues, "given your history you can see why I'm a bit reluctant to grant the two of you trust."

Sirius nods, answering for the two of them. Lily, next to James, is silent. James doesn't know if the fact that she's been ignored until now is a good thing or not.

"I have the perfect solution, however," Voldemort says, and his voice is like raw silk - smooth and inviting and yet James knows if he were to reach out he would snag his skin on its hidden roughness. "The Mudblood you brought with you."

All the heads around the table swivel to focus on Lily, who, to her absolute credit, doesn't react.

"Kill her," Voldemort says softly.

In that moment James thinks he can hear everything. He can hear Sirius sucking in a breath next to him and the sound of Voldemort's fingers tapping all the way on the other end of the table and the swish of Lily's hair as she turns her head quickly to look at him and most of all, most of all he can hear his ow heartbeat, a steady, fast  _thump-thump_ , once, twice, three times, before he finds himself standing up and he says, "Fuck it."

Everything kind of happens all at once immediately after those words leave his mouth.

Voldemort says, "Very well," reaching within his robes to pull out his wand; Sirius stands as well, drawing his own wand faster than James can see, and James is aware of Bellatrix across the table, her face contorted with fury, screaming at Sirius about how he's a liar.

James just barely has time to register that Voldemort is pulling back his arm to launch a Killing Curse at Lily when Bellatrix launches herself across the table, crashing into Sirius, who falls on the floor. James jumps back at that, just to avoid being hit with bodies, and at that moment, he hears Voldemort shouting, " _Avada_ -"

"Shit!" James yells, and he moves without thinking, reaches next to him and grabs the first part of Lily he can reach - her arm and a solid fistful of her hair - before pulling her down under the table just as Voldemort finishes his curse and the green light shoots over her head, smashing the ornate window behind her.

"Potter, are you  _kidding_ me?" Lily snaps at him under the table. "I don't need you to protect me, I can do it on my own!"

"I know you can!" James retorts, pretending not to notice the way she used his surname, a clear indication that she was angry with him. "But can we fight about this when we're  _not_ about to be killed?" He turns his head and sees Sirius three feet away, physically fighting Bellatrix and losing: she's sitting on his chest using her knees to pin his arms down and punching him in the face repeatedly. "Sirius!"

Both Sirius and Bellatrix turn to look at James in that moment, and Lily uses the opportunity to hit Bellatrix with a Stunning Spell. "Nice," Sirius says mildly, before extending his hand. James grabs it, taking Lily's in his other hand, and Disapparates.

The entire exchange since Voldemort had decided to try and kill Lily had only lasted about a minute, but to James, it had felt like a lifetime. They Apparate into the flat, looking shaken (Lily), disheveled (James), and overall, like a fucking mess (Sirius).

"Oh,  _fuck_ ," Peter says as soon as he hears them in the room, coming in from his bedroom. "What the hell happened?"

Sirius collapses on the couch without saying anything, and Lily walks in the other direction, outside onto the little balcony. Peter looks between James and Sirius, wearing a confused expression. "James?"

"We - we got what we needed. We have a bunch of names, that's what's most important."

Peter nods. "I'm gonna send a message to the Order, then."

"Okay." James turns and looks out the French doors to where Lily stands on the balcony. He takes one step towards her when -

"Jamie."

"Yes, Pads?"

"Will you get me an ice pack?"

James scrunches up his eyebrows. "Sirius, you're a wizard. Go look in the mirror and use  _Episkey_ to fix your face."

Sirius instead groans dramatically and doesn't move. James takes this as an end to the conversation and steps outside.

"Hey," he says. Lily doesn't turn around or reply. He clears his throat. "Look, Lil, I'm sorry you felt like I didn't trust you to take care of yourself or something, but I'm not sorry about what I did, not for a fucking second. I don't think I could stand it if you -"

James is cut off suddenly as Lily moves, turns to him, grabs the tie he's still wearing and pulls him close, kissing him and an unexpected fierceness. It takes him a moment before he responds, before his body reacts and he's holding her tight, pulling her close against him. This isn't by any means the first time they've ever kissed - he remembers that extremely vividly, it was after a Quidditch match and he'd been sweaty and exhilarated and he'd scored the winning goal for Gryffindor, making them officially in the finals, and she'd run into his arms and kissed him like there was no tomorrow, Peter passing Remus five Galleons in the stands while Sirius had laughed - but it  _feels_ like the first time, or maybe the last time. He remembers the way he felt in that moment right before, the look in her eyes immediately preceding her mouth crashing into his, and this. This reminds him of that.

James' heart is full and his stomach is tight with the residual nerves of the night, nerves that are finally starting to affect him, and he feels at him in the way Lily fits against him like they were made for each other, and it's this moment that he knows, more than any other moment before now, that he loves her.

They break apart, and before he can say anything, she says, "You don't have to apologize, I know why you did it. I would have done it for you."

He can't say anything else other than the one sentence dancing on the tip of his tongue, there are no other words in his mind aside from the ones that mean the most right now, so he lets them tumble out of his mouth. "God, Lily, I love you."

The way she looks at him then surpasses the way she'd looked at him on the Quidditch pitch by far, and he doesn't think his heart can soar any higher. That is, until she whispers, "I love you, too," and he thinks maybe, just maybe, it'll all work out alright in the end.


	2. twice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay!!! this is a really long chapter! i knew where i wanted to go with it, but i just couldn't get it to progress naturally without making it a lot longer than i was intending. i like it either way, though; i hope you guys do too.
> 
> as always, there's a bit of canon divergence in terms of timeline. thanks for reading!

The second time is January, 1979, and James likes to pretend everything isn't different now, but it is.

Remus came back from his undercover assignment after six months, quieter and more scarred and unwilling to talk to anyone aside from Sirius.

Peter's been dealing with heightened anxiety over everything that's been going on, and James thinks that the silence that's been permeating the room when Remus is having a bad day is starting to seep into Peter's everyday life.

Sirius is trying to act as though things aren't changing rapidly, like the sky outside isn't dark because of the dementors and that his brother's disappearance isn't directly related to Voldemort and that it isn't affecting him at all, and to the untrained eye he's succeeding, but to James, who's known Sirius longer and better than anyone alive, he thinks, he's a shell.

Lily doesn't talk about how scared she is sometimes, but James can tell in the way she sets her jaw during Order meetings and wakes him up in the middle of the night sometimes to fuck as though it's their last night on earth.

New Year's had come and gone very normally, with a single night of them acting like things were okay. It was a bit like the past years in the sense that Sirius threw a rager and he and James got drunk and sang  _You're My Best Friend_ by Queen while standing on the kitchen table. They'd invited everyone they knew, and for a single, glorious night, James had forgotten the fear that they'd been living in, the way his heart would speed up when the radio would crackle, the tenseness of his body when he would see a Patronus rushing towards them. It was one night where they could pretend that it was going to be okay, that maybe the new year would bring better things.

The new year so far does not seem to be bringing better things, and today especially seems like a mess, if Sirius breaking the coffee-maker, burning his hand, and cursing violently at seven in the morning is any indication.

"Sirius, what the fuck," James hears Remus saying in a sleep-smothered voice, padding past James and Lily's room and entering the kitchen. "What happened?"

"The stupid - the fucking  _machine_ and my  _hand_ and it just  _broke_ on me, Remus, I didn't mean to and -" Sirius' voice is getting higher and shakier and James feels like he shouldn't be listening, feels like maybe, definitely, this is about more than just the coffee machine.

"Hey," Remus says in a softer voice, a voice that you would use when trying to calm down a child about to have a tantrum, "hey, it's okay, it's gonna be okay, but shhh, everyone else is still asleep."

James is most definitely not asleep. He wants to be, but god, he cannot get his brain to turn back off now that it's decided to start listening.

"I'm okay," he hears Sirius say after a moment, his voice thick with unshed tears. James knows that tone all too well; it's the way Sirius sounded when he showed up on the Potters' doorstep with his trunk in his hand and his heart torn out, and it's the way he sounds every time someone accidentally mentions Regulus. "I'm  _okay_ , Remus, I promise."

There's a pause. James feels like he's intruding on something incredibly private between the two of them, like this is the most intimate thing he could ever listen in on them doing, even more intimate than the time he literally walked in on Sirius sucking Remus off in seventh year. This is different, though, this is far more domestic.

"What are you doing up this early anyway?" Remus asks, his voice a low hum. Sirius doesn't answer. "Sirius, tell me."

James can tell from the silence that Sirius is trying to think about what to say: does he lie or does he spill out the inevitable truth? Knowing Sirius, the truth always wins.

"I get up early most days and go look for Regulus," Sirius rushes out, and the pressure of not crying breaks on the last syllable of his brother's name, a sob forcing its way out with the last hissing letter of the sentence.

"Oh," James hears Remus reply, and it's less of a word than an exhalation, a prayer, a rush of love and sympathy in a single breath, and the sounds of Sirius crying are muffled; James knows that Remus has his arms around him now.

Next to him, Lily stirs. "What's going on?" she asks, stretching a little, eyes still closed.

"Shhh," James tells her, and she sits up at that, opening her eyes. "Sirius and Remus are having a private moment in the kitchen and I don't want to ruin it for them, so we have to be quiet."

"Oh,  _gross_ ," Lily exclaims, sitting up. There's a bang from the kitchen which James hypothesizes indicates Sirius jerking away from Remus suddenly and hitting his head on the cabinet behind him - this theory is confirmed when Sirius hisses, "Fuck," before silence falls again.

"What are you on about?"

"We  _eat_ there, we prepare  _food_ there, don't they have a bedroom for a reason?" she says, swinging her legs out of bed. "God, why wouldn't you interrupt?"

"Lil, they weren't fucking!"

"Glad to know you were listening, Prongs," Sirius calls from the kitchen, and James drops his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his right thumb and forefinger.

"I didn't mean to," he half-shouts back.

"It's okay!"

"Can everyone shut up, I'm still trying to sleep," comes Peter's voice for the first time, and Lily laughs as she swings open the door and heads to the kitchen.

The morning, if a little early, seems to tease at normalcy the longer they sit around the table and eat the French toast that James decided to make, the smell and the sound of laughter eventually luring Peter out of his room. During a little lull, Sirius fidgets with the sleeve of his - Remus'? - sweater and says, "I've been thinking."

"That's never a good sign," Lily quips, and Sirius points at her.

"Watch it, Evans. I've been  _thinking_..." he trails off, glances at Remus, then back at his fingers picking at his sleeve. "The Fidelius Charm probably doesn't work as well with all of us living in the same house. It's too risky, too many things could go wrong, one of us could get lost or taken and then we'd all be in danger."

"We're in danger all the time, Sirius," James answers, an edge creeping into his voice. He doesn't like where this is headed, he doesn't like the way Sirius is talking and the way it's making him feel. "But we're safer when we're together. That's how it's  _always_ been, we've always been safer together."

"Yeah, well, maybe not anymore," Sirius says, his voice tense. "Look, you know I love you, but mate, you gotta admit, it's harder for us to be safe when there's so many of us here. We should split up."

The silence in the room after Sirius says that is the loudest thing James thinks he's ever heard.

"Fine," he says shortly, and he's trying not to feel hurt, but that's how it's coming off in his tone.

"Okay," Sirius replies, in the same tone.

"Yeah, I guess you need your space, too, we've been living together for like, nine years now, it's only natural that you'd get sick of me."

"I'm not  _sick_ of you, James, I -"

"No, it's fine," James says standing. "I'll help you look for a place. Lily, can I see you in the other room, please?"

James manages to make it all the way to their bedroom before he flops on the bed facedown. He knows he's being dramatic, but he can't help it.

Logically, in his heart of hearts, he knows that Sirius is right. Honestly, the fact that Sirius is being the rational one right now is freaking him out almost as much as the notion of them not being together anymore. But the fact that Sirius wants to move out, that Remus is probably going to move out with him, that Peter might stay but it won't be the four of them anymore, it won't be The Marauders, it won't be the group that he's always felt safest and most at home in for the majority of his life... James doesn't know how to react to this.

"Are you okay?" he hears Lily say from the door, and he groans in response, not moving his face from where it's squished against the bedspread. "Oh, Jamie," she says, coming forward. He feels the bed move when she sits down, and her hand rests on his back, between his shoulder blades, fingers moving in slow circles as though to calm him down. "It'll be okay, love."

"No, it won't," James replies petulantly into the bed.

"If it makes you feel any better, I think Sirius is pretty cut up about it, too."

James lifts his head and turns it at that. "A little."

Lily smiles. It's a moment before she speaks again. "We have a meeting tonight."

"I know."

"I don't want to go."

"I don't, either."

"We have to though, don't we?"

Lily smiles again, a little ruefully, and James wants to kiss her. "I just want you to remember that joining the Order was your idea."

"How could I forget?" James replies, and sits up.

 

They spend all the rest of the day not really speaking to each other. Lily and Peter venture out and come back with groceries. Sirius flips through the channels on the Muggle television that they've wrangled into working for them despite the magic, eventually sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, watching superhero cartoons while Remus reads behind him, hand drifting down occasionally to play with Sirius' hair.

James, meanwhile, paces.

He can't find it in him to sit still. His brain feels like it's rattling around with a million loose parts, and he wants more than anything to figure it out.

This feeling reminds him of how he used to feel when he was a kid, before Hogwarts and before Sirius and Remus and Peter and most definitely before Lily, back when for the majority of the time, it was just him and his parents and the small amounts of time he would spend at Muggle school during the week. He was always antsy, always wanting to move, always trying to figure out ways to ramp up the interest in his day to day life because everything was so damn  _easy_ for him. It all came naturally - reading, writing, maths, sciences, making friends and somehow being the center of attention at all times.

Eventually, his parents figured out that because everything was too easy for him, that's why he was acting out, causing trouble in class, pulling elaborate pranks that were far too complex for a child of his age, for the most part. Of course, magic had helped a bit, but James has always been good at delegating, and even then he'd had a small knot of kids to help him inevitably cause a ruckus.

The day crawls on.

Eventually, at around four in the afternoon, someone decides that it's time to leave, to go to the meeting, to Floo over to headquarters - wherever that was this time - and get involved.

James is tired. Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally. He's tired of the way the Order makes him feel, he's tired of seeing the worried looks in his friends' eyes all the time, he's tired of the silence in the house that's going to grow even stronger after Sirius and Remus leave. For a split second, he contemplates quitting.

Then he comes to his senses and gets his coat, heading to the fireplace to pop over to the Order meeting.

Today it's being held at the Burrow, which means that Molly's inevitably going to get out her stress over the state of the world at the moment by feeding everyone, they're all going to cram into the sitting room to argue for close to three hours, and Sirius will most likely spend as much time as he can on the floor with the kids until they're shooed out of the room so that the grown-ups can talk.

True to James' predictions, upon arriving at the Burrow, Sirius immediately beelines to the kids, picking up both Charlie and Percy and talking to them at an incredible speed about everything that had happened since the last time he'd seen them, but watered down to a level that little kids would be okay with.

"Sirius, be  _careful_ ," Molly calls after him as he makes a particularly sharp turn with the kids, Charlie swinging wildly from Sirius' right arm, hanging upside-down and laughing. "He almost hit his head on the wall!"

"I'm fine, Mum," Charlie replies cheerfully, and Sirius flips him right-side up in a move that has Charlie suspended in midair for a moment and causes a collective gasp from everyone watching. "See?"

Sirius grins at Molly, who looks like she's resisting the urge to smack him. "Just - take them to the other room so I don't lose my mind watching you with them."

With Sirius and the kids gone, James sits between Remus and Lily on the couch, with Peter on Lily's other side, and pretends not to notice the dwindling numbers from last time, pretends that the energy of the room isn't significantly subdued, pretends that there isn't a tenseness in his stomach that refuses to go away.

If James is being honest, he doesn't pay attention to any of the meeting that day, just letting the words flow right over him as he sinks further into the couch. There's status reports over dinner and a silence left by the people who have been missing for a while that all of Dumbledore's plans can't seem to fill. Close to the end of the meeting, Sirius comes back in and sits on the arm of the couch next to Remus, who puts his arm on his leg in the kind of easy, comfortable gesture that screams of the trust they have in each other.

Dumbledore says, "Does anyone have anything they want to contribute?"

To James' utter surprise, Sirius sits up straighter and says, "My brother's missing."

"Who cares?" says Moody gruffly from across the room, leaning against the mantel. Sirius stiffens. "He made his choices, he knew what he was getting into."

"He's  _seventeen_ ," Sirius replies hotly. James notices Remus' hand tighten a little on Sirius' knee. "He's seventeen and he just wanted to impress our parents, and he's  _missing_ , he has been for a month, I'm not just going to let him stay lost."

"What do you propose we do, Sirius?" Dumbledore asks, cutting through the murmured conversations that have sprung up about Regulus. "If he's been missing for this long, you realize that he's likely been killed."

"I know that," Sirius says tensely, and he shakes his hair out of his eyes and raises his chin in a manner that James recognizes from the rest of his family. "I just want to take some time to try and find him."

"How do you expect to find him on your own?" Fabian Prewett says from the window. "You-Know-Who always covers his tracks, you know how hard it is for us to get any intel."

"I'm a smart kid," Sirius deadpans, "and I know my brother."

Eventually, Dumbledore agrees to change the assignment of duties so that Sirius isn't included until he figures out where Regulus is. To James, it feels a bit like they're all working at a shop and Dumbledore is their manager, trying to get someone to cover Sirius' shifts, and it sort of trivializes the entire situation. Nevertheless, Sirius is officially free to go look for his brother, and that energy hangs over them as they make their way home.

They Floo out of the Burrow, one by one, and tumble out into the living room of their flat, not really speaking. James thinks it might be one of the most silent days that they've ever had. Lily sits next to him when he flops onto the couch and lays her head on his shoulder.

No one speaks for a while, not disturbing the silence, but they all stay in the living room, and the quiet is heavy with the implications of Sirius' plans, but amiable in the sense that it feels a bit like how it used to be, a bit like home. Finally, Remus speaks.

"You don't have to go by yourself anymore, you know."

He's looking at an abstract part of the wall behind James, sitting on the floor and leaning on his hands behind him, one of which is just barely touching Sirius', who's sitting in almost exactly the same position. Sirius turns to meet his eyes and doesn't say anything immediately.

"He's right," Peter adds, surprisingly. "Padfoot, we're here for you, you know that, right?"

"I know," Sirius replies quietly.

There's another pause. Remus' hand moves a little and his fingers interlace with Sirius'.

Lily is uncharacteristically quiet, but James can tell that she's on board from the way she's breathing, steady and evenly paced, and from how bright her eyes are. "So what's the first step, then?" James asks, breaking the lull.

"I can't ask you to do this," Sirius says to the floor.

"You're not asking, Sirius, we're  _telling_ you that we're going to help you," Lily says, rather more sharply than James was expecting.

Sirius looks up at that, narrowing his eyes. "Look, I'm not by any means saying I don't need help -"

"That's a first," Peter mutters under his breath, and Sirius kicks him lightly.

"- but I'm not about to ask you to risk your lives for my brother, I know no one else cares about him and I know I'm pissed at him 98% of the time, but I love him and I just want him to be safe, and I feel the same fucking way about  _you_ lot, please just let me do this on my own."

James only waits a moment before speaking up. "Too fucking bad, Sirius. We love you and so by extension we love Regulus, so he's all of our little brother. That's just the way it is."

"Are we adopting him?" Lily asks mildly, and James laughs.

"Yeah, he's our son now," he replies, then continues. "So, Pads, I don't know how many different ways we can say it or how long it's going to take to get this through your thick fucking head but we're going to help you, whether you like it or not."

Sirius sighs. "I don't really have a choice in the matter at all, do I?"

"Nope," Remus answers, and the way Sirius looks at him then makes James feel a sudden rush of affection for everyone in the room, but especially for the two of them.

"Okay," Sirius says, then stands. "I'll get you guys everything I know."

They end up all sitting in the living room for the following nearly six hours, Sirius bringing out his messy, barely legible notes on the subject and outlining them on the blackboard that Remus easily conjures. He talks about the last time he saw his brother and what they talked about and how fucking frustrating it is trying to glean an inkling of information about what Voldemort's patterns are like from the absolute lack of knowledge that they have.

"I didn't even realize that we basically know nothing about him," James remarks half an hour later, running his hand through his hair and tugging at it in frustration.

"It's because he's a fucking anarchist," Lily replies, "chaotic evil in it's purest form." Remus laughs.

"So you can see why it's been like a month and I have pretty much nothing," Sirius adds, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers and gazing at the messy notes he's scrawled on the blackboard. The five of them settle into silence, staring at the board, and James thinks he can feel everyone's hearts beating in sync in that moment.

Peter speaks suddenly, saying, "Wait, Pads - didn't you have a house elf?"

Sirius looks up at that, brow furrowed. "Uh, yeah, we do, why?"

Peter shrugs. "I dunno, it just seems like he probably paid attention to what was going on in the house. He really loves Regulus, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," Sirius scoffs a little, "Reg is the angel child, Kreacher fucking dotes on him."

There's a slight moment of quiet before Lily says, voice impulsive, reckless, betraying the hour and the lack of ideas that they have, "Call him. I bet he could tell us something."

Sirius gazes at her, mouth slightly open, and tugs a hand through his hair. "Yeah, why the hell not."

James isn't sure whose decision it is, but he knows that before Sirius calls Kreacher there's a round of firewhiskey shots being passed around, and they all knock them back before Sirius raises his voice with a little bit of intention in his tone and calls the house elf's name. Their conversation with Kreacher is long and drawn out and James thinks that the only reason they get any information out of him at all is because since Sirius is still  _technically_ the heir to the Black family fortune and he has the name, Kreacher is still  _technically_ required to obey all his orders. Eventually, Sirius tells him to cut the bullshit and just tell them what he knows about Regulus, and the ensuing story leaves them all in a state of shock.

Kreacher spins a tale about a cave and the Dark Lord and a potion and a locket and James keeps looking over at Sirius, who's sitting on the floor, one knee tucked close to his chest and his arms locked around it as though that position will keep the darkness from Kreacher's story from spilling out of him. Finally, when the house elf is finished speaking, the room feels dead, and Sirius clears his throat.

"Kreacher, are you telling me the truth?"

"Kreacher is required to tell Master Sirius the truth in all things," the house elf croaks, and there's still a hint of malice in his tone, but his large eyes are watery from talking about Regulus. Even James can tell that Kreacher isn't lying.

"Thank you," Sirius says softly. "Tomorrow I want you to take me to the cave."

"Sirius -" Remus interjects, reaching out to him, but Sirius doesn't respond; he just looks at Kreacher, who bows before Disapparating.

Sirius stands, so suddenly that Remus jerks his hand back out of reflex, and takes a deep breath. He opens his mouth like he's going to say something else, but he doesn't, he just shakes his head and leaves the room.

 

The next morning, Sirius calls Kreacher and they do a sort of massive Side-Along Apparition to the cave that had been described the night before. No one had slept well, from what James can tell - Peter is stifling a yawn, Remus has even darker circles under his eyes than normal, and Sirius is uncharacteristically silent. James knows for a fact that neither he nor Lily were able to sleep a wink until the sky was lightening outside, and even then they only got a few hours before Sirius was knocking on doors, telling everyone that they needed to get going.

None of them speak much, but Lily's hand is tight around James', and he's filled with a dread that he thinks is largely centered around what they may or may not find when Kreacher takes them into the cave.

They follow his instructions based off of his recollections of when Voldemort first took him there, and Peter is the one who steps forward first and cuts his hand to get inside, and when the rough doorway in the rock lurches open, for a second, James absurdly thinks that Regulus is just going to be sitting on the other side, and that they'll be able to go home in ten minutes.

He should've known. Nothing's ever that simple. After all, Kreacher had said that Regulus had been dragged under the water, and unless he'd managed to get himself out, it's unlikely that he'd be easy to find.

Sirius' face is exceptionally pale, and James pretends not to notice the way his hand is shaking as he holds his lit wand aloft.

"At least it stayed open," Remus murmurs as they all walk through the door. Kreacher is still hovering on the other side of the opening, as though he's reluctant to pass through it again, and it seems as though he's waiting for some kind of instruction that'll force him to enter the cavern again.

"Sirius," James says quietly, to get his attention, and Sirius turns, noticing Kreacher's hesitation.

"You can go now, Kreacher," Sirius directs softly, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. James doesn't think he's ever heard Sirius speak in that tone to or about the house elf before.

He supposes that the fact that they're both here for Regulus, that they both love him unconditionally, that he's the one thing that holds no animosity between them, is enough to make them form some semblance of peace. Kreacher bows, lower than has ever been directed towards Sirius before, and Disapparates with a loud crack.

Perhaps the door was waiting for the last of their party to either leave or pass through the opening, because as the echoing snap fades, it shudders closed, leaving the five of them illuminated only by Sirius' wandlight.

"That's not fucking ominous at all," Peter deadpans, and Lily stifles a laugh. It's the laugh that kind of breaks the tension for a moment, letting them relax a fraction. It seems like the kind of situation that they would never relax in, not even for a second, but to their eyes, the cavern is empty, and it's just a matter of looking for Regulus.

"Kreacher said there were Inferi in the lake," Remus says, bringing them back to business, and he lights his wand too, holding it aloft and edging closer to the water.

"Moony, be  _careful_ ," Sirius says, a hint of fear cutting into his voice.

Remus looks over his shoulder at him, a smile curling the corner of his mouth upwards. "How the tables have turned, Pads."

"Shut up, don't lean out too far."

"I won't," Remus replies gently. He extends his arm, holding it over the water so that they can see the island in the center, and vague image of pale, ghostly bodies in the lake.

Peter swallows, hard. "Gross." James snort-laughs a little, and Peter turns to give him a look. "It  _is_ gross, Prongs! You can't tell me it isn't!"

"No, no, I agree, it's pretty fucking gross."

Remus steps back from the water, back towards Sirius, who leans in closer to him in a nonverbal indication of the worry lacing through his body. "Kreacher also said that we can't Disapparate from the cave, so I'll bet that there are several other spells preventing us from taking the easy way out. Like, I'd guess that we can't just  _Accio_ Regulus from wherever he is, or get to the center of the lake in any way other than the boat that Kreacher described. We're pretty much fucked, I think."

"Shit," Lily says. "What do you recommend, Professor Lupin?"

Remus blushes a little at that, but answers, "Honestly? I think -" but he's cut off as the rock wall behind them starts to open again, groaning loudly as though to alert them to an interruption to their investigation.

"Who -" James begins, but his question is answered with a gravity that makes dread curl heavily into his stomach like he's just swallowed a fifty-pound weight.

"Well," Voldemort says silkily. "So it's true. I must congratulate Bella," he adds, and out of the corner of his eye, James sees Sirius stiffen at the mention of his cousin, "getting the information out of that house elf was an unexpected and welcome stroke of wisdom. We will, of course, need to question you." And he smiles then, but it's more of a baring of his teeth, eyes narrowed and glittering with malice.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,  _fuck_ ," Peter is hissing under his breath, just to James' left, and James looks around at his friends. He knows in that moment that he probably has less than five seconds to do  _something_. All they really need is to be able to get out of the cave, just far enough away so that they can Disapparate and get home, and so he looks to his right at Lily, and when she turns to meet his eyes, he does the first - and possibly the most stupid - thing he can think of in that moment.

Voldemort's eyes flash to him and snap open wide as James pops into a stag and rushes him.

"What the  _fuck_ , Prongs?!" he hears Sirius yell, but he isn't focusing on anything other than the attempt to slam his antlers into Voldemort's chest. Voldemort is so shocked that for a moment he doesn't move at all, and when he does, it isn't to cast a spell at James, just to get out of the way. James careens out of the entrance to the cave, skidding a little as he turns, and the door is open behind him.

Over his shoulder, he hears, "Fuck!" "Oh,  _shit_!" "Let's go!" "James, what the  _hell_ are you doing?" and within a few seconds, his friends have rushed out of the entrance and are rejoining him. Most unfortunately, Voldemort is also regaining his composure, and seems to have decided that the easiest thing to do will be to kill them all. He's raising his wand, and James is so high on the adrenaline of what he's just done that he can't even hear Voldemort properly, all he knows is that Voldemort's mouth is moving and a jet of green light shoots out of his wand and misses Remus narrowly.

"James, let's  _go_!" Lily shouts, and he transforms back into himself, tripping over his human feet just like he always does in his stag form, and grabs her hand.

His eyes connect with Remus' and he nods, and with that, Remus grabs both Sirius and Peter and twists, Disapparating, and Voldemort screams. His wand is swinging, pointing to James and Lily, and she's already moving, also Disapparating, her left hand tangled in James' and her right both holding her wand and lifting to flip Voldemort off. "Fuck you, Baldy!" she calls, and James laughs as they pop out of the cave with a loud crack.

They're back in their living room in an instant, James' ears still ringing from the crashing of the spells and the echoing of the cave and the sound of Voldemort shrieking in anger. He almost trips over Sirius, who's lying on the floor, hands covering his eyes. Remus and Peter are collapsed on the couch, and all of them look at each other for a minute, before Sirius says, "Shit," and gets up from the floor.

He stands in front of them like he's about to make a speech, hesitating for a few seconds before eventually saying in a flat tone, "Thank you for coming with me," and leaving the room in a rush.

"Sirius -" Remus calls after him, standing in an instant and following him, and a moment later the rest of them hear their bedroom door shut with a snap.

Peter sits on the couch for a minute before announcing, "I'm going to go take a nap, you guys," and leaving. James realizes that it's only eleven in the morning, which seems somehow impossible.

Lily's hand is still laced in his and she squeezes it, asking, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he replies, and they take Peter and Remus' vacated spots on the couch. "Yeah, I'm fine, I'm more worried about Sirius though, I can't even imagine how fucking rough it must feel to basically have confirmation of what happened to your little brother -"

"No, you idiot," Lily interrupts, and James knows from her tone that the insult is directed in love. "I meant are you  _okay_ , are you physically okay, you fucking turned into a deer and charged at You-Know-Who in a cave, you could have been  _killed_." Her voice shakes on the last word, and James turns to meet her eyes at that.

"I'm sorry," he replies, and he feels like he can't stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth at this. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have been so reckless, it's not fair to you, I -"

"Shut up," she interrupts again, and kisses him in a way that makes him feel like there are stars exploding behind his closed eyelids. "Shut  _up_ ," she says again when she pulls away.

James' eyes are still closed, but Lily's only pulled her mouth away and her forehead is still resting against his, and he says, in the softest voice he thinks has ever come out of his mouth, "I just had to do something, he was going to kill you."

"He was going to kill all of us." She pauses for a beat. "You saved us."

"It's not that big of a deal." He can feel the tips of his ears burning.

"Yes, it is."

They sit like that for a moment, before Lily pulls back a little more and James opens his mouth again and lets the floodgates down. "I just. I know we've been in danger before but it's never felt so  _real_ , so fucking inevitable, and I still can't believe we got out of it, you know? And I just - I couldn't imagine not living through that and dying without doing something probably stupid that I've been thinking about for a long time." He opens his eyes then, and finds Lily watching him carefully.

"You mean, more stupid than rushing You-Know-Who in a cave without your wand even out?"

"Infinitely," he says, and he loves her, the beat of his heart thrumming through his entire body when he looks at her. She smiles, and he has to tell her.

"I love you," he begins.

"I love you, too," she answers, and he laughs a little.

"I wasn't done!"

"I know."

He pauses, ducks his head, then blurts out, "I love you, and I can't imagine my life without you. And it's probably stupid, it's probably  _so_ stupid, but I've been thinking about it forever and -"

"Yes," Lily interrupts, and James snaps his head up so that he can actually see her face. "I know what you're going to ask. Yes."

He sits back, throwing his hands in the air. "You didn't let me finish! What if I was about to ask if you were down for anal?"

She laughs at that, a real laugh, one that makes her curl in on herself. He loves her, he loves it when she does that; some people throw their heads back when they laugh hard, but Lily tucks in, collapses under the laughter, and he loves her. When she sits back up, the look in her eyes is overflowing with tenderness and she says, "But you weren't."

"No," he says, "I wasn't."

"I'll let you finish."

He just looks at her for a moment, then rushes, "Will you marry me?"

James knows he almost died less than an hour ago, and his heart is still racing from that, but now it's racing from something else, and he thinks he's the luckiest man in the world when Lily says, "Of  _course_ ," and he pulls her into his lap and kisses her until they're both breathless.


	3. thrice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another long ass chapter!!! woohoo!!! again, this is just another one where i let the creative juices flow and it just took me where it wanted to go.
> 
> some notes/personal headcanons/a bit of real canon that makes this make a bit more sense, if you want to know some fun facts:  
> 1\. headcanon: james and lily got married on halloween. actual canon: harry was born on 31 july 1980, which is exactly nine months after the date that i chose for their wedding. this makes it that much more painful when you remember that if they were married on halloween, they were killed on their anniversary.  
> 2\. there are three ratatouille references in this chapter. some are more prominent than others. you get bonus points if you can figure out all of them.  
> 3\. headcanon: the order of the phoenix didn't have a set headquarters during the first wizarding war bc unlike the second, there wasn't an essentially empty house like grimmauld place that they could use. additionally, the fidelius charm wasn't popularized until after the first wizarding war, so that's why they can just hop around to people's houses like this.  
> 4\. actual canon: remus lupin is the tallest marauder; he's 6'2 because that's the length of a wolf (on average) from nose to tail. headcanon: james is the next tallest, standing between 5'11 and 6'1; sirius and lily are the same height (5'9) and he hates it; peter's a solid 5'7 and doesn't mind at all.  
> 5\. actual canon: peter didn't join the death eaters until 1980. this is why there's kind of a lull in the activities of the order at the moment. in 1980, when he started passing information to voldemort, that's when a lot of people were dying in quick succession and things got very bad very quickly. so as of right now, through the entirety of this fic, he's not a spy. he's just a nice rat.  
> 6\. actual canon: the minister of magic at the time was actually a guy named harold minchum. james' feelings for his policies are shared by a lot of the community - they don't really like him and they don't think he's making a lot of progress since voldemort is, you know, still out there. under him, barty crouch sr. gained a lot of traction and together they increased the number of dementors just roaming about the country doing their dementor jobs. eventually, he was replaced by millicent bagnold in 1980, who gained popularity with the public for just happening to be minister when voldemort was destroyed for the first time in 1981. she also has a rad ass quote from that night which is, "i assert our inalienable right to party." what a hbic. love her.
> 
> okay. i think that's all. thanks, i hope you like what i have for you today :)

The third time happens in December, 1979.

The past month of James' life has been an absolute fucking whirlwind. It's late November, and almost a month ago, he and Lily got married in Godric's Hollow. Honestly, it was fucking great. They weren't expecting to actually be able to have a nice time, what with all the shit that's been going down lately, but his parents had offered their house as a venue, and Sirius had given an extremely inappropriate best man speech, and a surprising amount of people had been able to come. Lily had been absolutely radiant, and every time James had looked at her he'd been blown away by how much he loved her.

The night was wild, and they were young, and Sirius had shoved several old classmates out of the way to catch the bouquet, proceeding to attempt a proposal to Professor McGonagall immediately afterwards. He'd clutched his heart dramatically at her rejection, and responded by rushing over to Remus and pulling him into a sweeping dip under the fairy lights in the backyard, thoroughly scandalizing Lily's sister and her husband, who had surprised James by showing up at all.

The night had ended and the two of them had snuck away to have a quickie in James’ childhood bedroom before heading off for a two-week honeymoon in Italy.

James wishes with all his heart that they’d been able to stay the entire time.

Halfway through the trip, on a Wednesday morning with the sun streaming in through the airy curtains of the little flat they were staying in for the four days that they were in Florence, a Patronus had shown up from Sirius containing news that James had been expecting, but dreading, for years at this point.

Within two hours they’d packed and taken a Portkey back to Godric’s Hollow, back to his parents’ house, and it was _fucked_ , it was so fucking _unfair_ that James wanted to scream.

He did scream, after he shrugged off Lily’s hand and had wandered out by himself through the streets and ended up in a park somewhere, finding a secluded section of trees and letting out a frustrated yell before descending, slowly, to his knees.

It was Remus who came and found him, saying nothing other than, “Hey,” before sitting down in the fallen leaves next to him.

They didn’t speak for a while, but James had scooted closer to his friend, and Remus had wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Finally, he’d said, “I’m sorry,” and James had nodded.

“Dragon pox,” he replied tonelessly, and Remus rubbed his shoulder in a comforting, circular motion. “I just – I didn’t think it would be this way.”

“I know,” Remus said, and James had looked up to the sky, as if for an answer.

“I mean, I was expecting something like this, but not _dragon_ pox, not now, not when things were so nice for like. A fucking week and a half.”

"I know."

There was a pause.

"Life's a bitch."

"That she is."

"Do we know how long they have?"

"You didn't ask?"

"No." James had taken a shaky breath. "No, I couldn't stay there for long enough to ask."

Remus had paused, biting his lip. “Prongs, they’re – they’re old. The Healers gave them another week at most. It burns through people, and neither of them have strong systems to begin with.”

James had nodded. “Is it – is it safe for us to be around them? Are they contagious?”

Remus shook his head. “It’s okay. The Healers said that it’s actually only contagious before symptoms start to show up. At this point, none of us can be infected, but they left a few potions for us to take that should kill the pox if any of us are carrying it and don’t know it.”

“Okay.” He stood. “I have to go back to the house.”

“Okay,” Remus repeated back to him. He stood too, quirking an eyebrow a little as he took in James’ appearance. “You got a bit of a tan.”

James smiled a little at that. “It’s sunnier there.” He doesn’t think he means just in the weather.

They’d headed back to the house at that, and James had forced himself to be in the room with his parents for as long as he could, only leaving for short interludes. Sirius was with him for the majority of the time, because he was their son too, and Lily spent long stretches with them as well. Peter and Remus were in the house also, but for the most part, they took care of the logistics, making sure that the three of them ate and that the house stayed in as much order as could be expected for what was happening.

Dragon pox is a monster of an illness, and Fleamont and Euphemia were gone within five days. Sirius, ever emotional, had cried enough to fill a lake; when they were both gone, Remus had to take him out, and James knew that they’d be in the living room, Remus holding Sirius close and stroking his hair until the tears abated.

James, on the other hand, had felt a numbness creeping through his limbs, filling his throat and making him silent. It hadn’t been like he’d felt as though he _had_ to be strong, for some reason, but it was more like he couldn’t get the tears to come. He wanted them to. He felt like he was being forced to hold his emotions behind a dam, and he longed for a crack to make it burst, so that his rush of tears could join Sirius' and form an ocean, the vast depth of the water only a fraction of the unending love that Fleamont and Euphemia had given the two of them.

A Ministry representative had arrived with the Potters’ official will, just as a formality, three days after they’d passed. James had already known that mostly everything would go to him and, by extension, Lily. Sirius cried at the short reading when it was revealed that Euphemia had wanted him to have the piano in the front room, an instrument that had been played only by him for several years.

It’s been two weeks, and November is coming to a close, and they’re all nineteen, except for Sirius, and they’re all still in the house in Godric’s Hollow. A week after James’ parents were gone, Remus had gently suggested that they should leave, and let him and Lily be alone, but James had vehemently disagreed.

He’s glad of that decision. The flat in London is empty right now. Peter’s probably going to move back into it after they disperse, but it’s paid off, so it’s not as though they need to get back there any time soon. But James doesn’t think he could stand it if everyone left and the house was silent and nearly empty.

He and Lily would be okay, he knows. But the fact is, right now he’s welcoming any distraction that he can get.

It takes a while, but by the time the end of the month is creeping nearer and nearer, the house is starting to feel like a home again. Remus and Lily have taken it upon themselves to update everything, and they start organizing and moving things from the flat and redecorating. James can’t bring himself to change his parents’ bedroom yet, even though he knows that it’s the master suite, and he and Lily will want to move in there eventually.

Right now, he doesn’t mind though. The house is bustling, and Sirius is constantly playing records on Remus' old gramophone, and every night Peter, who is suddenly deciding to debut his skills as some kind of master chef, whips together dinner for them and they eat it as a family.

The house is just starting to fill up with laughter again when reality catches up to them.

They get an owl one morning, the tapping on the window interrupting Sirius as he whales away on the piano, delivering a stellar rendition of _Bohemian Rhapsody_. Lily lets the bird in and shoves Sirius' shoulder lightly to get him to stop playing as she reads the hastily scrawled message.

"What is it?" Sirius asks, looking up at her from the bench.

"Vacation's over," she says ruefully, lowering the parchment. "The Order needs us back."

"Fuck," Sirius replies lightly, fingers dancing across the keys in a hasty arpeggio.

"Eloquent and accurate, Pads."

“Those are my specialties.” He stands, shutting the piano cover with a gusty sigh. “We should probably tell everyone else.”

“Yeah,” and Lily runs a hand through her brilliant hair, the rings on the third finger of her left hand glittering a little in the light from the window. “Time for a family meeting, I guess.”

James, Remus, and Peter are in the kitchen/breakfast area; Peter’s making eggs, James is sitting on the counter and talking, gesticulating wildly in motions that Lily recognizes from earlier when he was telling her about the dream he had last night, and Remus is sitting at the table, reading the Daily Prophet and occasionally sharing lines out loud.

“Hi, babe,” James says, throwing a sunny smile in their direction as they walk in. His hair is a mess in the way it only is in the first ten minutes after he emerges from bed, and Lily loves him.

“Morning, honey,” Sirius replies before Lily can, walking over and kissing James on the cheek. Lily snorts.

“The Order wants us again,” she says, and James’ eyebrows scrunch downwards in a bit of a frown. “I think it’s urgent.”

The room falls silent, the crackle of the gramophone reaching the end of a record and the sizzle of the eggs in the pan the only sounds. Peter clears his throat as he slides them off the pan and onto a plate. “Jamie, your omelet.” James reaches out and takes it, murmuring thanks as Peter continues. “Well, we all knew they’d call us back eventually, didn’t we?”

“You’d’ve thought they’d give us the full two weeks,” Sirius says under his breath, and Remus gives him a side-long look, but doesn’t say anything. Sirius makes his way to the toaster and rifles through the pile of loaves of bread sitting next to it, then turns around sharply, throwing his hands in the air. “Who ate the last of the sourdough and didn’t replace it?”

“Me,” James replies mildly, swinging out a foot and kicking Sirius in the thigh lightly. “It’s my house, Pads. You replace it if you want it.”

Sirius points at James, punctuating the over-drama of his statement with his hand motions. “I _would’ve_ if I’d _known_.”

Lily shakes her head, laughing a little. “The note says that they want us to go to the meeting tonight. It’s in Hogsmeade this time, I think Dumbledore’s brother is closing his place for the night so that we can have a bigger space and we aren’t all crammed in a tiny room.”

“The Hog’s Head is already a small pub, what do you mean we won’t be crammed in a tiny room?”

"It's okay, Pads, you can get alcohol this time, though."

Sirius snorts. “Yeah, we’ll need it if we’re expected to make it through another one of these shit meetings.”

Perhaps it was the loss of their parents – and yes, James thinks of his parents as _their_ parents, they belonged to Sirius as much as they did to him – but he thinks that he’s noticed a definite change in Sirius over the past month. It’s like when they’d gone to the cave and actually seen where Regulus had disappeared to, but somehow worse. He just seems incredibly _jaded_ with nearly everything, and try as he might, James can’t seem to get him to open up and talk about how he’s feeling. It’s like after the initial flood of tears was over, that was all, and he’d decided to stop feeling anything about the shit that had happened to them anymore.

James can’t help it; he worries constantly, and Sirius is the chief subject of one of his biggest worries. He always has been, and James thinks that maybe he always will be.

He hops down from the counter, sets his plate where he was just sitting, and begins to walk upstairs to change his clothes, dropping a kiss on Lily’s forehead before he does so.

The meeting is set for after dinner at Hogwarts would have concluded, when the teachers would be able to get away safely, and the five of them arrive early, taking some time to wander through the streets before they’re due at the Hog’s Head. They stop at the fence that divides the main road from the Shrieking Shack, and stare at it for a moment, no one speaking, until Sirius pulls a flask from inside his coat and toasts the ramshackle old building, taking a swig and passing it to the others.

“Good times,” James says as he feels the burn of the firewhiskey sliding down his throat.

Remus hums a little on his left side, and James takes note of the hollowness of his face. Judging from Sirius' enchanted moon tattoo when he’d caught a glimpse of it earlier that day, James guesses that it’s less than a week until the full moon. These days, Remus and Sirius would spend the full moon just the two of them, in the flat they’d moved into about six months ago. The time that they’d all spent in the Shrieking Shack together during their Hogwarts years had been a fact of life, but Remus doesn’t like to talk about how he handles his transformations now, and James doesn’t ask. Sirius has mentioned some things in passing about wards and an experimental potion that seems to be difficult to make, and about how just having him there makes it better for Remus, so that’s what he plans to do.

Peter pulls a watch out from his pocket, then sucks in a breath when he reads it. “We should get going.”

"What time is it?" Sirius asks.

"Time for you to get a watch."

"Time for  _you_ to get a new joke."

“Shut up.” They set off for the Hog’s Head, the path covered in a light dusting of snow crunching under their feet. James reaches out and takes Lily’s hand, and she squeezes his arm with her other hand as well, leaning into him.

When they get to the pub, they manage to get a table together near the back of the room, and it’s already a loud and boisterous environment, if missing a few key members. Almost none of the Hogwarts staff are there yet, except for Hagrid, who’s recounting a story about the centaurs in the Forbidden Forest to Moody at the bar.

James manages to grab five butterbeers from Aberforth before heading back to the table, and Sirius frowns at it before popping off the cap and taking a drink. “I’m questioning your choice in drinks, Jamie,” he says, and James kicks at him under the table.

“Ow!” Peter exclaims. “What was that for?”

“Sirius,” James replies lightly, laughing a little. “Sorry.”

The meeting gets into full swing within half an hour, Sirius delaying proceedings for a full five minutes when McGonagall enters the room with his dramatic declarations of love for her. Eventually, after everyone (Sirius) settles down, Dumbledore starts to talk about the things that need to be done and James tries not to feel dissatisfied, like nothing is happening in the fight against Voldemort. He knows that, logically, there are things going on in the background, things that he hasn’t been told, things that he thinks he _should_ be told – not because he’s any worthier than any of the other members of the Order, but because he’s a nosy fucker – but not knowing any of these secrets makes him antsy.

It’s clearly starting to become evident in the bouncing of his knee when Lily places her hand on it to still his motion. “Sorry,” he murmurs, and she just runs her thumb back and forth on his leg, and it’s this tiny motion that makes a sense of calm sweep through him.

“In any case,” Dumbledore is saying from the front of the room, “it’s possible that volunteers will be needed to go on a reconnaissance mission into the Ministry. Their infrastructure is vulnerable, and I doubt that they’ll be able to last against him for much longer.”

James looks at Sirius, thinking he sees a hand raising, but Sirius is just twisting his hair into a bun on the top of his head. It’s then that they have a conversation with their eyes, in a way that’s mainly communicated through the expressions they wear on their faces. Sirius' eyebrows and the set of his jaw tell James that he most definitely does _not_ want to do this, and when he turns to look at Lily, her eyes are telling him the same thing.

Despite what they’re saying to him, James raises his voice a little and asks, “What would the mission entail?”

“James,” Lily says under her breath, and he’s a little surprised at the way her voice has tightened.

“What?” he replies, utterly confused. “What’s going on?”

“I just – I don’t want you to do it,” she replies, but before he can ask why, Dumbledore is explaining how they’d need someone to get into the higher levels of Ministry administration, like up to the Minister’s level, and figure out what sort of level of influence that Voldemort has over what’s going on. The Aurors that they have in the Order don’t seem to be able to reach that level, and James thinks that he might be able to do it. He has the Cloak, after all, that should make it easier for him to walk around the Ministry virtually undetectable.

Dumbledore finishes speaking, and James nods, hoping that this motion doesn’t make it look as though he’s ready to volunteer for it, just that he understands what Dumbledore was saying. He turns his attentions back to Lily, who’s looking at him with wide eyes, and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her with that expression on her face before. She’s normally fearless, always ready to spring with him into action, and this sudden change makes a curling hand of worry tighten around his diaphragm.

He stands, grabbing her hand and pulling her outside, with only a short, “Sorry, we’ll be back,” before exiting the pub. They stand outside, the chill night air making their breath frosty, and Lily doesn’t seem to want to look at him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and she won’t answer.

When she finally does look at him, her eyes are bright, and she kicks at a dirty clump of snow by the door. “It’s nothing. I just. I don’t want you to go because I’m selfish and I don’t want to lose you.”

“Oh,” James says, an exhale and a promise, and he steps forward and pulls her close to him so that her head is resting against his chest, right above his rapidly beating heart. “Oh, love, it’ll be okay,” he says, his voice hushed and pressed against her head.

“You don’t have to be so stupidly brave, you know,” Lily tells him, her voice a little muffled by her proximity to his chest. “I know you _are_ brave, but you don’t have to be such a _Gryffindor_.”

“You could come with me,” he says. “We always stick together, come with me and have my back.”

"That's an even worse idea."

"So it's what we're doing?"

She sighs. "Of course." They pull apart and go back inside.

It almost feels weird, to be doing this just the two of them, because their friends are silent when they come back in and tell Dumbledore that they’ll do it together, and James takes note of how tightly Sirius has his jaw clenched and the way it’s completely at odds with his arm slung loosely across Remus' shoulders. But either way, James trusts Lily with every fiber of his being, and he knows that it’ll be okay.

They’re set to try and get in next Monday, and they use the visitors entrance, telling the security wizard that they’re here to make sure that their marriage license was filed correctly. This isn’t a lie – it’s a known fact that the Ministry has a reputation of fucking up people’s forms after their marriage, so it’s always a good idea to check on them. The security wizard makes sure that they know where they’re going, and they assure him that they know _exactly_ what’s going on and where they should be headed.

Again, not a lie, just not the whole truth.

They actually do head to take care of the form first, and it comes as a surprise to neither of them that there’s a problem and they have to reprocess everything. They’re told to come back in three hours, just for final checks, and they decide to use this as an opportunity to sneak their way into the Minister’s office. James knows that the Ministry considers the Order of the Phoenix to be a guerilla organization, and because of that, they continue not take any of Dumbledore’s advice about what to do seriously. Maybe that’s why the current Minister, Harold Minchum, is rumored to be on his way out of office.

James has never liked Minchum’s methods, so he can’t say he’s complaining.

They’re on the lift on their way to Minchum’s office when the doors slide open at the Department of Mysteries.

“Oops,” James says, moving to press the correct button for the floor that they need, when Lily catches his hand and hisses, “Wait!”

He stops and looks where her line of sight is directed, and feels his breath catch in his chest. “Is that –”

“Yeah,” Lily replies quietly, her grip on James tightening. “Wanker.”

The figure at the end of the hall seems to be pacing back and forth, wand out, as though on guard for something. It’s the middle of the day, right in the center of the Ministry of Magic, and James feels an overwhelming urge to find out what’s going on.

“What’s Snivellus doing lurking somewhere he doesn’t belong, d’you think?” he asks, stepping out of the lift and starting to make his way down the hall as quietly as he can.

“ _James_ ,” Lily says urgently, hesitating a minute before following him. “You _know_ this isn’t part of the mission, what are you doing?”

“We can’t just ignore this,” he replies, edging down the hallway.

“Shit,” Lily mutters, and draws her wand, standing right behind him. “We’re gonna get killed.”

The smile he gives her is brilliant, but full of the reckless abandon that makes her stomach twist. They’re at the end of the hall now, and Snape could turn at any moment and see them, but before he can James is launching himself forward and poking Snape in the neck with his wand.

Snape still hasn’t seen him, so he asks, “What do you want?”

“I want to know what the hell you think you’re doing down here, Snivellus,” James almost growls. Snape’s hands are raised, his wand in his right, and Lily reaches out and takes it from him.

Snape sighs. “I could ask you the same question, Potter.” The poison in his voice makes Lily’s blood thrum in anger.

“Answer him,” she snaps, instead of punching him like she wants to, and he turns to look at her with an expression she can only assume is attempting to elicit pity or affection from her.

"Lily -"

“That’s my name,” she says sharply, and James grabs the shoulder of Snape’s shirt and turns him so that his back is up against the wall. “It isn’t the answer to my husband’s question.”

She takes a fierce pride in the way James’ shoulders shift and the corner of his mouth turns upwards when she calls him her husband, and Snape noticeably stiffens, but remains silent.

“You know, we’re probably just going to have to take him with us, Lil,” James says, raising his wand so that the tip of it is tucked almost completely under Snape’s jawbone. “I’m sure we could just bring him right to Dumbledore.”

“Good idea,” she answers, tucking Snape’s wand inside of her bag. “After all, I’m sure he has much better ideas on how to get an answer out of an uncooperative Death Eater than we do.”

"Certainly has more patience."

"That's right, and you know, if he runs out of it, there's always Mad-Eye."

“Not sure Dumbledore would hand him over to Mad-Eye first, but you know who’d love to try and question you, Snivellus?” James asks, leaning in. Snape’s eyes are narrowed, full of anger. “Sirius would get a kick out of this.”

There’s a pause, and Snape remains silent. “Fine,” Lily says, and his attention snaps to her. “James, let’s go, let’s take him with us.”

Neither of them had really expected to get anything out of Snape, but there’s still an air of disappointment as they head back to the lift and take Snape to the Atrium, where they can Apparate out. James hesitates for a moment, unsure of where to take him, when Lily suggests Hogsmeade and they Apparate to the little village as one.

The process of handing Snape over to Dumbledore is far more anticlimactic than James was expecting, and the old man seems to regard their choice to bring Snape back with them rather than to stay and continue their investigation of the Ministry as a mistake. James doesn’t really care, though; all he can think about is that the hallway that they’d been in must have meant something.

Dumbledore won’t tell them what it means, what really was happening in the Department of Mysteries, and James knows that once his mouth has decided to shut, it’s unlikely that they’ll get anything else out of it until Dumbledore chooses to tell them. Nevertheless, he’s certain that there’s something more going on than what they’re being told.

“He didn’t even say he’d update us if anything came out of this,” Lily grumbles as they walk away from Dumbledore’s office. It’s a little weird, being in the halls of Hogwarts now, as adults. James was used to getting the stares from people when he was a student there – he doesn’t mean to sound as though this is a brag, but the Marauders were fairly well known by the entire student body – but getting looks from young students who see them as _real adults_ is a new feeling.

James doesn’t feel like a real adult. He barely even feels like a fake one.

“Yeah, but what were we expecting? When has Dumbledore ever told anyone the straight up truth?” James replies, and Lily huffs out a little laugh.

They were told that they could use McGonagall’s office for taking the Floo back to Godric’s Hollow, and even though she isn’t in, they sneak in and use the fireplace anyway. Lily goes first, and James follows in about thirty seconds. When he stops spinning and steps out onto the living room rug in his home he’s greeted by Sirius lounging on the couch and the sound of running footsteps going in the opposite direction.

He looks around. “Where’s Lily?”

Sirius glances up from the book he’s perusing and answers, “She just ran off in that direction,” he points vaguely, “I think to the toilet. She looked like she was gonna be sick.”

"Oh."

"Yeah, she never has that reaction to the Floo. Is she okay?"

"I dunno," James replies, and Sirius shrugs.

“By the way, Remus and Pete are out at the market,” he continues, swinging his legs down from the arm of the couch and sitting upright. “Wormy was saying that in the event that you two survived your trip to the Ministry and came home in one piece, he wanted to make you something nice.” Sirius pauses, looking up at James for a moment before adding, “How did it go?”

“Fuck,” James replies, taking a few steps forward so that he can sit down next to Sirius. His best friend scoots over so that there’s room on the couch for the both of them, and James sinks into the cushions. “You won’t fucking _believe_ what we saw there.”

“Oooh,” Sirius sing-songs, grinning. “Do tell.”

James thinks about it for a second, then replies, “Nah, mate, I’m gonna keep you in suspense until we can tell everyone.” He stands. “I should go and see if Lily is okay.”

Sirius remains on the couch in a dramatic sprawl. “You’re killing me, Jamie.”

“Hasn’t that been the goal since we were eleven?”

Sirius responds by chucking his book at him as James leaves the room.

 

“So, how did the mission _actually_ go? James won’t tell me.”

Sirius is standing in the kitchen hovering around Peter, who’s attempting to make something French that James has never had before, and stealing the thinly sliced vegetables from the cutting board. Peter, frustrated, smacks him on the back of the hand and Sirius jerks it back, but not before snatching a piece of zucchini and popping it in his mouth. “Pads, I swear, if you don’t get out of the fucking kitchen –”

"I just spend time in here because I adore you."

"No, you don't. Shut the fuck up."

"You're right, I don't, I'm just here for your suddenly incredible skills in the kitchen. Where the fuck did they even come from?"

“ _Anyway_ ,” Remus interjects, walking into the kitchen as well and tugging Sirius out by the back of his shirt, “how _did_ it go? Why would you want to not tell us until we were all together?”

“The suspense is fucking _killer_ , I know,” James replies from his seat at the kitchen table. Lily comes in from the other room and sits down next to him. She’d told him earlier that everything was fine when he’d followed her to the bathroom, but he’s still not sure if he believes her. She looks awfully pale to him, and he thinks that it’s probably a good idea for her to take it easy tonight. It’s that time of year, there’s bound to be a bug going around. “What’re you making again, Pete?”

Peter pops his masterpiece in the oven and turns around, tossing his oven mitts on the counter before sitting down with the rest of them at the table. “It’s called ratatouille.”

“Ratatouille,” James repeats, trying not to smile. He can do it. He can control himself for three seconds.

“That’s fitting,” Remus quips, and Sirius breaks, bursting into a laugh that’s mainly snort.

“I hate you all,” Peter sighs. “Someday you’re all going to be dead and it’ll be because I’ve had enough.”

“Foreboding,” Lily says, laughing. “Are you gonna poison the ratatouille now, rat boy?”

Peter shakes his head. “I’m just going to stop feeding you lot, and then you’ll be useless. Maybe then I’ll get some of the respect that I’ve been deserving for years.”

James pokes Peter with his foot under the table, nudging his knee. “You know we love you, Wormy. I’ll tell you how the mission went first, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“That’s my knee,” Remus comments, and James withdraws his foot.

“What’s the point?” Peter asks. “I mean, there’s only three of us who don’t know, it’s not like you were going to tell a giant room of people the intimate details of how your day went, and I’m going to find out before the rest of the world.”

James shrugs. “You never know. I could be going outside to hold a press conference any minute now.”

“Oh my _god_ , just tell the story!” Sirius interrupts loudly and suddenly, throwing his hands in the air. “Jamie, I love you, mate, but I’m gonna die of old age before you get to what happened at the Ministry. Knowing you, it’s about to be really fucking anticlimactic, isn’t it?”

James narrows his eyes, and Lily says, “The lift stopped at the Department of Mysteries without us telling it to and who was skulking around at the end of the hall, by the entrance? Any guesses?”

Without waiting for any of their friends to hypothesize, Lily points at James and herself, and in unison they say, “Snape.”

Sirius jerks back and grimaces. “Gross.”

“Yeah, you said it. So naturally, we went and tried to get him to tell us what was up, and he wouldn’t answer, so we took him to Dumbledore.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“It’s just – Sirius was right, that was anticlimactic,” Remus says.

“Thanks, babe.”

“Why are you acting like that was a massive compliment? I just said that you were right.”

“And I know how hard it is for you to let those words come out of your mouth. I’m truly touched, Moony.”

“You’re such an idiot.”

Sirius gives Remus a sunny smile. “That’s how I know you love me.”

Remus rolls his eyes in response. “You realize,” he says, directing his attention away from Sirius completely, “that Dumbledore is most likely _never_ going to give you any sort of update on the information he gets out of Snape unless it’s something huge?”

“That bitch loves his secrets,” Peter comments, in a voice that sounds as though he’s narrating a documentary.

“Yeah, I know,” James answers with a gusty sigh. “I mean, at least we got something out of our trip to the Ministry. We didn’t get to the Minister’s office at all, but something came out of it.”

“Love, we didn’t even go back to the records office and check to see that our license had been refiled properly,” Lily says suddenly, turning and touching James’ knee lightly, as though to refocus his attention.

“Ah, fuck, we were using this recon mission as an excuse to actually get our shit taken care of.”

“We’re really irresponsible adults.”

“That isn’t news.”

The five of them sit around the table and the talk enhances from there, just bouncing back and forth on things that they plan on doing tomorrow, how their days went today, occasional commentaries on the frankly delectable scents wafting towards them from the kitchen, et cetera. Remus mentions that since the full moon is approaching, he and Sirius are most likely going to finally make their exit from Godric’s Hollow and head back to their flat so that they can deal with those few days together, and Peter seems to take that as a cue to say that he’s going to be following suit.

“Huh,” James says, after his friends have spoken a bit about their departures. “It’ll be just us, then.”

“And you can _finally_ have sex on the kitchen table without worrying about any of us walking in!” Sirius adds brightly. Lily throws the nearest thing she has on hand at him, which happens to be James’ wand, which was resting on the table. Sirius ducks, avoiding it easily, and the wand clatters on the floor behind him. He laughs. “Come on, you’re gonna miss us, admit it.”

“I never said we wouldn’t,” she replies, smiling despite having just thrown something at his head. “You just don’t have to be disgusting.”

“So the thought of fucking James on the kitchen table is disgusting?”

“Hey,” James protests mildly.

“Yes,” Remus cuts in, “we’re literally about to eat a meal here in a few minutes.”

As if on cue, Peter’s timer _ding!_ s merrily, and he pops out of his seat to finish his masterpiece.

 

A few days pass without contact from the rest of the Order, and things at Godric’s Hollow progress normally. Well, as normally as they can with the dark news that the Daily Prophet seems to be bringing them on a regular basis and the sudden absence of Remus and Sirius from the household.

They departed yesterday morning, promising to be back soon, but James has the feeling that this is a real separation, and that there’s something so tangibly different about this goodbye that it feels like the end of an era. Peter’s planning on leaving later today, and James thinks it’ll be weird but good to have the house with just him and Lily in it.

Weird, because it’s the house he grew up in, and it feels more like his parents’ house than his. Good, because Sirius was right, they can have sex on the kitchen table now if they want to.

Or at least, he’d be considering it if Lily didn’t truly seem to be suffering from some kind of bug. She’s up all hours of the night in the bathroom, and James has asked if she’s okay, if he can do anything, if she needs him to run to the store and get her some Muggle medicine or a potion that can help ease nausea and no, she tells him that it’ll be okay, and that she just needs to let it work its way out of her system. Peter decided that before he leaves, he wants to make essentially a vat of his mother’s famous chicken noodle soup, so that she’d have something mild to eat when she can.

By two in the afternoon, he finishes up the soup and packs his things and leaves with a quick embrace, Floo-ing back to their old flat in London.

And the house is quiet.

It stays quiet for a little bit. James thinks that he was worrying about it too much, and finds he actually quite enjoys the gentleness of their new environment. For so long, he’s lived with his three best friends, and on the summer holidays when they weren’t all there, Sirius always has been. But now, he feels as though all of the hustle and bustle of living with three other boys his age was the energy that was meant for his twenties crammed into those adolescent years, and he’s essentially ready to settle into middle age right about now. He’s not even twenty yet, but he’s already feeling as though he’s forty-five.

James doesn’t mind. It’s nice to get a bit of relaxation in. He thinks that this peace that he and Lily are able to spend together in the few, stolen days where there’s no one else in the house and they aren’t receiving any messages from the Order, maybe can make up for their interrupted honeymoon by just giving them time to spend together.

And they do. The radio silence lasts for almost a full week, and they take this opportunity to set up the house the way that they want it, and James learns how to make breakfast for Lily without using magic – because Peter, of all people, had advised him that it would show more effort and be a more greatly appreciated gesture – and he does it every morning, and on that Saturday they go to the local Muggle farmer’s market and peruse the stalls together. For that tiny sliver of time, they feel like a normal young couple, and it’s even nicer because Lily does start to feel better, and they do have sex on the kitchen table, just because they can.

Their chunk of peace ends when they receive an owl telling them when the next Order meeting is, and James audibly groans upon reading it.

“It was your idea to join,” Lily sing-songs, and the tail end of James’ groan turns into a laugh.

“Why do you always remind me of that? This is my biggest regret.”

They go to the meeting, of course, and this time it’s being held at Sirius' cousin Andromeda’s house. To this day James doesn’t know why they don’t have a set headquarters, but he’s decided to stop questioning Dumbledore’s motives at this point. He knows he’ll never get a straight answer.

This is where Sirius would make some kind of joke about how _of course you’ll never get a straight answer from Dumbledore, Prongs, because he’s gay_ , which is exactly why James never uses that choice of words around him out loud.

Andromeda and her husband Ted have a rather spacious living room, so fitting the entirety of the Order into it doesn’t seem to be that difficult. James and Lily get there when they’re supposed to, but a vast majority of the rest of the group seems to be running late, so they attempt to make small talk with their hosts and the other members who are actually present on time until more people get there.

Fifteen minutes later, Sirius wedges the front door open and stumbles in, Remus right behind him, laughing and saying, “You won’t _believe_ how hard it is to drive a motorbike in the snow!” He wraps his cousin in a tight hug and presses a kiss to her cheek before pulling Remus inside further and making a beeline for the Potters. James notices, and wishes he didn’t, the toll that the full moon seems to have taken on Remus, and in that moment he’s overwhelmingly grateful that Sirius is there for him if he won’t let James and Peter be as well.

“Have fun on your drive, did you?” Lily asks mildly, and Sirius swoops in and kisses her forehead before sitting down next to James. “Thanks, Pads.”

“Anything for you, Lily-flower. And yes, we did have fun.”

“No, we didn’t,” Remus contradicts, and James snorts. “Sirius, we almost crashed like, four times.”

“Is that truly any different from a normal drive?”

“So now you’ve resorted to insulting yourself just to make a point?”

Sirius narrows his eyes a bit, grimacing and drawing out his response, “Ye-e-e-es?”

Remus shakes his head in response, rolling his eyes, but this is an action that James recognizes all too well from the many years that they’ve spent together, and he knows that the tone that’ll come out of Remus' mouth next will tell Sirius that he loves him anyway. “Unbelievable.”

“You better believe it, honey bee.”

Peter comes in about five minutes after that, stamping his feet on the doormat and unwinding a rather large scarf and generally making a huge production out of it. “How’s everyone?” he asks as he makes his way to their knot, and Sirius laughs.

“Decidedly warmer than you, Wormy, come sit down.” Peter squeezes between Lily and Remus, who’ve scooted apart to make a space for him, and so all five of them have managed to fit on a couch meant for three people at most. “I’m gonna be on your lap in a second, Prongs.”

“Might as well just move there now, I think it’ll be more comfortable.” Sirius hums in affirmation, and with that he halfway stands so that James can scoot a bit closer to the arm of the couch and sits back down on his lap.

“The two of you make such a lovely couple,” Lily remarks from next to James.

“Thank you, we’re naming our first child Fleamont,” James replies, and Sirius jumps.

“No, we most certainly are _not_ , James! Think of his teenage years, why would we do a thing like that to a child?”

“I agree with Sirius,” Lily says. “We’re not naming any of our kids Fleamont, just so you know.”

“That’s fair.”

“‘Any’ of our ‘kids’?” Sirius cuts in, doing overdramatic air quotes. “Just how many ‘kids’ do you think you’re going to be having, Lily? You already have _me_.”

“You’re the family dog.”

“ _Exactly_ why I’m so affronted! How is it that I’m so easily replaced?”

“Shut up, shhh,” Remus interrupts, holding his hand out in the middle of the three of them as though to silence the conversation. “I think the meeting’s starting.”

As usual, the meeting progresses with none of them – aside from Remus and Lily – paying that close of attention, and Sirius and James generally being idiots for the entire time. James is sure that no one expected anything different, judging from their expressions as soon as they saw Sirius sitting on his lap, but it doesn’t stop Mad-Eye Moody from yelling at them at least three times during the course of the evening, trying to force them to pay attention like they’re a couple of unruly students in his class. Dumbledore didn’t come to this meeting, and James isn’t really surprised; he’s been showing up at less and less of them lately.

Remus had commented that this either meant things were going really well or really horribly, and there was really no middle ground on it. Sirius had quipped back that it was possible that Dumbledore had just gotten stuck at Hogwarts because, you know, he’s the headmaster, and Remus had poked him in the side, hard.

There’s a slightly more somber air about the meeting tonight, given that the other night, there was a senseless attack on a group of Muggles who happened to be passing through an area that was largely populated by wizards. This is the kind of thing that makes James’ blood boil; events like this are part of the main reason that he’d decided that joining the Order was the right thing to do, but it makes him feel so fucking _useless_ to not be able to even prevent these kinds of things.

The pit in his stomach grows deeper when the attack is brought up at the meeting, and it’s revealed that the Muggles in question were actually the family of someone who was a few years under them at Hogwarts, and they were on their way for a visit. James feels Lily stiffen next to him when that’s mentioned, and he knows that she’s thinking of her own family.

Sometimes he feels bad for not making her family more of a priority in their lives. To be honest – and this is one thing that he’s particularly ashamed of – he forgets about them. The family that they have, that they spend time with on a regular basis, is a chosen one, made up of Sirius and Remus and Peter, and after his parents passed, he forgot that Lily’s were still around. It isn’t as though her sister is or wants to be an active participant in their lives (James knows how many letters that Lily sends that go unanswered; he thinks that might be partially because Petunia would refuse to answer post via owl), but he’s painfully aware in this moment of how gutting it would be for his wife if something like this happened to her family.

He feels a wrench of guilt, and resolves to make more of an effort.

The meeting concludes with the ordinary instructions of vigilance from Moody and assignments of people to tail and things to watch for. James has noticed that it seems as though there’s a lull in actual activity from Voldemort, and while he thinks that feels like a bit of a relief, it also has anxiety for what could be happening next coiling in the pit of his stomach like a snake ready to strike. Something’s about to happen, things are about to get a hell of a lot worse, but he just doesn’t know what’ll be the catalyst in forcing that action.

“Oh, Potter,” he hears as he and Lily start to make their way out of the house as the various members of the Order begin to disperse. The five of them had made plans to go out to a local pub and get some drinks before heading home, Remus and Sirius having already left, but James supposes that he might be held up a little. He looks over his shoulder to see Professor McGonagall waving him over. “Come here, Professor Dumbledore asked for me to give this to you.”

“What is it?” he asks, vaguely aware of Lily lingering by the door, waiting for him. After a moment, she drifts over and joins him.

Professor McGonagall hands him a tightly bound scroll of parchment. “I didn’t ask – it isn’t my place. All he told me was that I needed to see it safely into your hands, and to tell no one else.”

James takes the parchment, looking down at it for a moment before looking to Lily, who has an expression of equal bemusement on her face. “Uh, thank you, Professor,” he says, and Professor McGonagall nods. She hesitates, then reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, and he feels a surprisingly strong amount of solidarity from that one motion.

“Stay safe, you two,” she replies earnestly, and they nod, James tucking the scroll into his pocket as they head out the door.

“What do you think that was about?” Lily asks as they walk down the road, heading into the little town. James doesn’t even know which pub they’re going to, he just heads for the one with Sirius' bike parked in front of it.

“I dunno,” he replies, holding the door open for her and rushing inside almost immediately after her to avoid being out in the winter chill for much longer. “My best guess is that it has something to do with what Dumbledore may or may not have gotten out of Snape.”

Remus looks up from a booth in the far corner of the pub as they enter, and waves them over with a grin. “Are we telling them?” Lily asks under her breath, waving back.

“Of course,” James replies, thinking back on his earlier internal musings about family. “We tell them everything.”

“I thought so. Just checking.”

They sit down at the booth, squeezing in on opposite sides; Lily with Sirius and Peter and James with Remus. “What took you so long?” Peter asks, and James shrugs.

“McGonagall gave us a scroll from Dumbledore, she said that he wanted it to be _directly_ handed to us,” Lily says, and James pulls it from his pocket at that.

“Oooh,” Sirius says mildly, and James begins the process of trying to work off the string tying it in a cylinder. Eventually, Remus takes it from him and easily slides it off.

The scroll absolutely refuses to lie flat, but James ultimately manages to get it to stay open for a moment so that they can all peer at it from their positions in the booth. On it, written in a narrow, loopy hand, reads:

_Dear James and Lily,_

_Your discovery during your trip to the Ministry has proven most fruitful. I would like to see you soon, preferably during the next week. I will be at Hogwarts; there is much that we need to discuss._

_Albus Dumbledore_

Sirius sits back after reading it, wearing a flat expression. “That was a whole load of nothing.”

“It was _not_ ,” Lily answers, elbowing him sharply. “It just means that he figured something out, something that he couldn’t send with an owl, that’s why McGonagall had to give it to us directly.”

“It also means that Snivellus actually ratted on his master, why am I not at all surprised?” James adds.

“I resent the use of the word _rat_.”

“Sorry, Pete, how’s _snitch_? As in _snitches get stitches_?”

Peter raises his beer to that. “Much better.”

James becomes aware of Remus carefully watching him to his right, and turns to look at his friend. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Remus replies, “just… I don’t know, something about this is giving me bad fucking vibes. When has Dumbledore ever given anyone a straight answer? Don’t, Pads,” he says quickly, raising a hand as Sirius opens his grinning mouth to make some kind of queer joke. “And the fact that he wants to see you, to talk about this? It makes me nervous.”

The rest of the group sort of hums in assent, settling into a bit of a quiet moment. Or, as quiet as they can get in the middle of a pub on a weekend night.

They spend the rest of the evening together, eventually splitting up and heading home when they’re feeling warm from the alcohol but nowhere near drunk, which to James is a massive fucking indication of how adult they’ve been getting lately. Neither Lily nor Remus drank, claiming as they always do that they need to be the responsible adults, so they all make it home safely, Disapparating when they’re a safe distance away from the pub.

James still thinks it’s amusing how when Sirius is a little too buzzed to safely drive, Remus tends to shrink the motorbike to the size of a cigarette lighter and pop it in his pocket so that they can just Apparate home.

When they get back to Godric’s Hollow, James rereads the letter from Dumbledore and sends a quick Patronus message to him, the silver stag bearing the confirmation that they’ll head to Hogwarts for a meeting on Tuesday bounding away through the window and out into the night.

The weekend rolls away faster than James would like, and before he knows it, it’s Tuesday afternoon and they’re Floo-ing from their fireplace to McGonagall’s office, because Lily had spoken with her, and they’d come to a consensus that it would be politer for them to head in there rather than appearing suddenly in Dumbledore’s office. She’s grading papers for the fifth years when they arrive, and swiftly stands, taking them directly to the headmaster’s office without hesitation.

With the utterance of the password ( _Pepper Imps_ ), the stone gargoyle lets them aside and they leave McGonagall at the foot of the stairs, ascending after giving her a quick thanks. “Are you nervous?” Lily asks quietly, and her hand slips into James’.

He huffs a short laugh. “Of course.”

“Good, I had to make sure that I wasn’t the only one.” He smiles at that, and raises his hand to knock on the door.

After three quick raps on the wood and a clear, “Enter,” from inside, James pushes the door open with his right hand, nudging it further with his shoulder as he leads the way in.

Dumbledore is seated at his desk, but he stands when he sees the two of them, a small smile nearly hidden under his beard. Despite the secrecy that James has found seems to constantly surround the old wizard, he can’t help but feeling a bit relieved upon being in his presence. There’s an air about Dumbledore that just exudes calm, like whatever the news might be, it’s something that they can handle.

“Ah, Lily, James, it’s good to see you,” Dumbledore says, walking around the desk to shake their hands.

“Nice to see you too, sir,” Lily replies. She lets go of James’ hand to shake Dumbledore’s, and he’s a sap and misses her touch. He just nods though, shaking Dumbledore’s proffered hand, and perhaps he’s misjudged the anxiety that he felt earlier, because it still seems to be making him quiet.

Dumbledore gestures at the chairs across from the desk, and James has an overwhelming rush of memory of their seventh year. They were in here quite a lot as Head Boy and Girl, and he’d felt these nerves every time he’d walked through those doors. James tries to calm himself now by thinking that they’d never been in trouble then, so it’s unlikely that they are now, right?

Lily clears her throat. “So, you needed to see us because of – because of Snape, Professor?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore says, and he takes off his half-moon spectacles before pinching the bridge of his nose briefly between his thumb and forefinger. He replaces his glasses and continues, “yes, I was hoping that I wouldn’t, but he’s provided me with confirmation of something that I’ve been dreading for a bit.”

“What is it?” James hears himself say, and his knee is bouncing uncontrollably. He feels like he needs to move, like he needs to just have everything speed up, like how he would feel before big Quidditch matches when all eyes would be on him, like how he felt right before the first time he and Lily were going to have sex. Like something was about to happen, and he was nervous about it, and he just needed it to start so that his body wouldn’t feel so fucking uncontrollable.

“I want you to know, first, that Severus Snape is not currently here. I’ve gleaned as much information from him as I can, and for now, until I decide whether to set him free or turn him into the authorities, he is with someone I trust explicitly.” Dumbledore pauses, and James wants to yell at him to get on with it. “However, he did tell me that the reason he was in the Department of Mysteries that day, was because he was tasked with finding a way into the Hall of Prophecies. You see, some months ago, when I was interviewing a potential candidate for the position of the Divination professor, she made a prophecy, and Severus Snape, who happened to be listening at the door, heard a good portion of it. He was caught, halfway through the prophecy however, and was removed from the establishment.”

“Okay,” James says, and he thinks that maybe he sounds a bit rude, but he’s tired of the suspense. “What does this have to do with us?”

“Perhaps it’s best if you hear the prophecy,” Dumbledore suggests, and he stands, retrieving the Pensieve from a cabinet and bringing it to the desk. He pulls a silvery strand of memory from his temple and deposits it into the basin, giving it a small shake so that a figure appears in its center, glassy-eyed and rotating.

It begins to speak in a croaking voice, wheezing, “ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..._ ”

The figure, having finished her prophecy, sinks back into the Pensieve, and the room is silent.

Dumbledore is looking at them, particularly at Lily, with an extremely gentle expression, as though waiting for one of them to speak first.

James has a faint inkling that he’s about to understand everything, like he’s been missing a piece for a good portion of time, and says, “What – what was that?”

“Voldemort,” Dumbledore says gently, and the two of them twitch slightly at the use of the name, “seems to think, according to Severus, that the prophecy applies to the two of you. Or, more accurately, your progeny.”

“Progeny?”

“It means offspring,” Lily says in a small voice, and James turns to look at her. She’s very pale, and he might be imagining it, but he thinks that she won’t look at him directly.

“I know that,” he says, and it’s dawning on him now. “Lily, what are you not telling me?”

James is vaguely aware of Dumbledore standing and murmuring something about giving the two of them a moment of privacy, and then the door to the office is snapping shut behind him and they’re alone.

He doesn’t think he’s ever felt such an acute mixture of fear and hope tangling in the pit of his stomach.

“James…” Lily begins, and he doesn’t say anything, he just waits. She turns to look at him with her brilliant, brilliant green eyes full of unshed tears, and it’s like that makes the hesitation end suddenly, and the words are spilling out of her mouth. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I know this isn’t what we were planning for at all, and I just – the only person I told was Remus, I had to tell _someone_ while I wasn’t sure, and the only way that You-Know-Who could think that it was about _us_ would be if – if someone intercepted the note that I sent to him, and I just. James, I _wanted_ to tell you, I just also _didn’t_ want to until I knew for sure, I’m sorry, I just –”

The words are rushing out of her and she’s terrified and so is he and he loves her so fucking much in that moment, he loves her more than he’s ever loved anyone or anything before in his life, and he can feel it in the way his hands are shaking and his heart is pounding and he hopes to god that he doesn’t have a stupid expression on his face.

He’s still for half a heartbeat more, and then he moves, pulling her into his arms in a motion that’s both so familiar and so new, because this confirmation just changed everything. “Oh, god,” he whispers into her hair, and she laughs a little against his chest, because holy fuck.

The first, stupid thing out of his mouth is, “Is this why you were so certain about never naming any of our kids Fleamont?”

Lily bursts into a giggle at that, ducking her head and wiping a tear away from her cheek. “No, I’ve been sure about that since you introduced me to your parents.”

There’s a pause. “July?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at her and he feels like his heart is about to burst. “I love you so much, I’m so fucking excited.”

“James, you heard what Dumbledore said, he thinks it’s about us.”

“Nah, it can’t be, we’ve only met him twice.” The door is creaking open behind them as he says this, and both of them turn to look back at Dumbledore, who’s entering the office again.

“Actually, according to the information that I got from Severus, Voldemort considers your initial rejection of induction into the Death Eaters, back during your school days, as an act of defiance. So, that brings you right up to three.”

“Oh,” James says, and the word rushes out of him like a weighty exhale. “Well, shit.”

His fingers are tangled together with Lily’s under the lip of the desk as Dumbledore launches into a speech about how they can stay safe and the Fidelius Charm and going into hiding and what they need to do to protect their family, and James is somehow both rapt with attention and daydreaming about all the future has to offer.

Once their meeting is concluded and they’ve made their way out of the office, he manages to wait until they’ve made it off of the moving staircase before he sweeps Lily into his arms, pulling her close to him and kissing her as though it’s the first time and the last time and like he has to make up for all the times that he hasn’t been able to kiss her, and when he might not be able to in the future. Logically, they haven’t ever been in such clear danger as they are now, and it’s like there are targets painted over their bodies, but for just a moment, he wants to forget that, and he lets himself get lost in the way her body melts into his, her hands pulling at his hair and her mouth telling him everything she can’t articulate in the moment.

“I love you so much,” he says again, and he feels her smile this time.

“I love you too,” she answers, and the way she tells him, soft and earnest and as though it’s a secret meant just for him, makes his heart swell in that moment in the same way it did the first time she told him.

The sky is darkening outside, and James knows it’s because of more than just the late hour, but he doesn’t care; he pulls away and presses a kiss to Lily’s forehead and lets himself dream of a future for his family.


	4. fourth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. the finale. here's where the major character death tag comes in. thanks for coming along for the ride :)
> 
> again, i'm on twitter @gryffsirius, instagram @emmakmarie and tumblr @siriusorioff if you want to swing by and say hi!

The fourth time doesn't happen on October 31st, 1981. Maybe that's why the chapter is titled differently.

James sits with his son on the couch of their home in Godric's Hollow, in the house where he grew up, the house where he wants his children to grow up. It's getting late for Harry now, and he knows that getting him this excited right before he's supposed to go to sleep will result in the baby staying up for close to two hours more, but god, he loves his son with all of his heart and would do anything to make him laugh.

He looked at Lily with Harry yesterday and his heart had never felt more full, more alive, more ready to burst. His whole life, he'd never thought he'd be this lucky.

James does consider himself lucky, there's no denying it. He flicks his wand again, making the puffs of color-changing smoke float out of it, and Harry, able to walk a little bit now, laughs as he tries to catch them, reaching up for the rings and when he can't get them, reaching for his father instead. James might not be able to leave the house, but he doesn't care in moments like this.

The clock in the hall is chiming, and that clock always reminds James of his own father, who'd taken the time to wind it by hand every day and tried to use it as a lesson to teach James about good habits and patience and responsibility. James, who had been nine at the time, had nodded without listening.

James, now twenty-one, wishes he had listened more.

"Hey," Lily says from the doorway, and James looks over his shoulder at her, looks at the way her eyes light up when Harry smiles at her, looks at how she's wearing one of his flannels over her own clothes and how she fits into his life like she was the puzzle piece he was waiting for this whole time. He thinks fleetingly of four years ago when they kissed for the first time and he felt like his world had been slightly out of focus for his entire life before that moment, and when they had their arms around each other everything clicked into place.

"Hi," James replies, instead of telling her everything running through his head. He drops his wand on the cushion next to him.

"Is he ready for bed?" she asks, reaching out for Harry, who's clinging onto James' knee at this point.

"Yeah," James says, picking up their son and handing him over, still seated on the couch. "I got him a little excited though, I'm sorry."

"James," she admonishes, just his name, and she says it in a sigh that makes him ache, thinking of the way she makes it sound like a caress, even when she's irritated. "You know better."

"I know," he replies, standing. He comes over, kisses his son on the forehead and his wife on the nose. He pauses, then kisses Lily again, this time deeper, and he can feel the curve of her smile against his mouth.

"Hey," Lily says, breaking the kiss, trying to be stern but with a hint of a giggle laced through the words. "I have to put this one to bed."

"Okay, okay," James says, leaning back. "But maybe when you're done, do you think you'd like to put  _this_ one to bed?"

"That was terrible. Say goodnight to your son."

James grins. "Goodnight, fawn. I love you." Harry babbles something along the lines of  _dada_ , reaching out and grabbing at James' glasses. "Okay, okay, go with Mum."

Lily leans in and kisses James' cheek lightly, a butterfly kiss, the one she gives him when he knows he's going to get more. "I'll see you in a minute."

"I'll be here," he says, and she smiles at him before beginning to take Harry upstairs to his room.

James stands in the hallway, and for a single minute, everything is fine.

Then, there's a noticeable shift -

The gate outside creaks, and James leans to look through the window next to the front door, the one that shows the path leading up to the house. For a moment he can't believe his eyes, he thinks he's imaging things, and then all he can think is about how he's so fucking  _stupid_ , he left his wand in the other room, how could he have thought that even for a second they were safe -

The figure advancing on the door is hooded and cloaked, but in the light of the lamps on the porch, James can see a pair of glinting red eyes and an outstretched, pale white hand.

He can't breathe. He can't fucking breathe.

Lily is halfway up the stairs, but she stops when James suddenly sucks in a breath and  _moves_. He finds his voice, shaking but full of urgency, calls over his shoulder, "Lily, it's him! Take Harry and go, I'll hold him off!"

" _James_ -" Lily begins, her voice a breathless rush, but she's cut off as the door blasts off its hinges, flying inward, missing James by three inches and James wishes he had his wand -

"Go!" he says, and he hears her running, holding their son, their baby boy who's done nothing in his little life to merit being hunted like this.

James turns back to face Voldemort, whose hand is rising as though in slow motion. He can feel every fiber of his body screaming at him to move, to get out of the way, to save himself, but no, he can't. He steps a little to the right, as though to get his wand, to give himself a chance, but Voldemort is laughing now, and James knows what's going to happen before it does.

There's a burst of light, the emerald flash of the Killing Curse, and the last thing on his mind as he falls,  _like a marionette whose strings had been cut_ , is of a different green.


End file.
